Durand Durand

This weekend was a tornado! Friday night my mother and two of her lovely friends joined Chase, John, and I for some dancing at Eau Claire's eloquent Vienesse Ball. The dance itself is crazy, the entire UWEC student center is turned into a dance/music hall. Everything from women's acapella groups to Scottish bands, moldy cheese to White Russians. We couldn't seem to get enough and after dropping our dates off I finally hit the sack around 2:30am.



I woke up to the sound of my buzzing alarm at 8am. I ran down stairs for some oatmeal and pre-race pep talk before loading up the scort for Durand! It was a super day for racing. Slightly over-cast with the sun peeking out occasionaly and winds out of the north at a much gentler demeanor than normal. I lined up with the big dogs this year so there was sea of GP and Flanders riders all looking lean and tan. We did five laps for a total of sixty some miles. On the first lap you could cut the tension with a knife, which I think that goes hand and hand with the first race of the season, and it was Dan in a two man break off the front. The break was out front for a couple laps and the pace stayed at tempo until we were once again whole. "The move" came on the fourth lap when I least expected it (on the fastest and realitivly flatest section of the course)! A monster surge at the front, with myself around 20th wheel, left gaps in the field and me behind. I was really pissed at myself at this point because I knew all the major rollers were in that group. I knew I needed to act so I made a desperate attacked from the front in hopes of catching back on. A GP rider followed me but didn't pull through until he decided to attack me! Drooling from the mouth I was force to limp back into the main field as the ten man break road off. After that point I knew I need to cut my losses so I conserved some until the final climb. Another rider from our group made a gut busting attack and I followed. We broke away but I was toast! He wanted me to pull through but I couldn't. At this point it was a struggle to push 360 watts and he must been at 400. We were only a five minutes from the finish so I humped it in crossing the line in the low teens. Overall I'm happy with the result especially considering my power tap hasn't read over 400 all spring, which is soon to change as the mountain bike season rapidly approaches.

In other exciting new Chase and I made the drive back to Spooner for the day to build up our new mountain bikes! They are sweeet! I'm in love with the white pin strips on the candy red sparkling bass boat paint job! And if that wasn't enough PCW got a sweet face lift in the jersy department with double the style points on our dark to baby blue lightning yellow outfits! Louis Garneau made our stuff this year and the quality is through the roof (I sound like a used car salesmen) but in all honesty its baller!

World is your playground!
Chad